A set of custom Pandoc writers for converting to BBCode.
2bbcode is a project hosting custom pandoc writers, written in Lua, which allow to convert to BBCode any input format supported by pandoc.
Since pandoc ships with a built-in Lua interpreter, using 2bbcode wrtiers doesn’t require installing Lua on the system.
There are currently two 2bbcode writers in this project, addressing different BBCode flavors:
2bbcode.lua– the original 2bbcode writer by @lilydjwg, targeting the BBCode used by FluxBB.bbcode_phpbb.lua– a fork of2bbcode.luaby @tajmone, targeting the BBCode used by phpBB.
Pandoc is a cross-platform FOSS command line tool for converting documents from one format to another. It natively supports more than 20 input formats and over 40 output formats, and can be extended to work with custom input (reader) and outupt (writer) formats through external scripts – likes the custom BBCode writers in this project.
Pandoc is written in Haskell, and precompiled binary releases for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are available for download.
Pandoc was originally created by John MacFarlane, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and is now maintained collaboratively on GitHub.
- BBCode manual at PHP.net
- BBCode.org (website dedicate to BBCode resources)
- phpBB’s BBCode guide
- BBCode entry at Wikipedia
BBCode (Bulletin Board Code) is a lightweight markup language used by many message boards to format posts. From Wikipedia:
BBCode was introduced in 1998 by the messageboard software Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) implemented in Perl. In 2000 BBCode was used in phpBB – an internet forum system written in PHP. vBulletin also uses BBCode.
BBCode tags work in a similar way to HTML tags, but square brackets are employed instead of angle brackets, and no paragraph tag is needed:
Here comes a [b]bold word[/d].
BBCode has fewer tags than HTML, intended to cover simple formatting cases.
Since different implementations of BBCode employ different subsets of tags, there are different flavors of BBCode, and while the most common tags should work across all BBCode implementations, advanced formatting tags might not.
Just pandoc:
For more information, see Pandoc Setup.
Required 2bbcode Linux files:
bbcode.lua2bbcode
./2bbcode -f FORMAT <input >outputFORMAT defaults to markdown_github. Use pandoc --list-input-formats to list acceptable formats.
Required 2bbcode_phpbb Linux files:
bbcode_phpbb.lua2bbcode_phpbb
./2bbcode_phpbb -f FORMAT <input >outputSame as with 2bbcode, except for scripts names.
If you want to use 2bbcode globally, put all the required *.lua and *.bat files in a same folder which is on the system %PATH%.
Required 2bbcode Windows files:
bbcode.lua2bbcode.batgfm2bbcode.bat
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Using
2bbcode.batvia command line:2bbcode filename.extcreates
filename.bbcode.Pandoc will guess input format from input file’s extension. This batch script allows conversion from any pandoc supported input format. For markdown input files, it will default to pandoc’s extended Markdown.
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Using
gfm2bbcode.batvia command line:gfm2bbcode filename.mdThis will convert the GitHub-Flavored (no hard-linebreaks) input markdown file to
filename.bbcode. This batch script invokes pandoc with the following settings:--smart --wrap=none --normalize -f markdown_github-hard_line_breaks… which is most likely what you’re looking for when working with GitHub related markdown files.
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Using
2bbcode.batandgfm2bbcode.batfrom Windows File Explorer:Just drag’n’drop input file over
2bbcode.batorgfm2bbcode.bat, a converted*.bbcodefile will be created in the same folder as input file.
Required 2bbcode_phpbb Windows files:
bbcode_phpbb.lua2bbcode_phpbb.batgfm2bbcode_phpbb.bat
Use is the same as with 2bbcode, except for scripts names.
You have different choices for setting up pandoc:
The advised choice is #2 – install via Chocolatey!
Pandoc for Windows ships with an msi installer.
When asked, choose “install pandoc for current user” (best choice).
Since Pandoc doesn’t (can’t) check for updates, the best method of installation is via Chocolatey (or ChocolateyGUI):
- Pandoc package at Chocolatey.org
Chocolatey handles silent installation and updates in the background (using default options), and helps you keeping pandoc always updated to the latest release.
If you prefer to use pandoc in standalone mode, you’ll need to extract pandoc binary executable from the installer file – for some reasons, the standalone version is no longer available for download. The installer contains two binary files (pandoc.exe and pandoc-citeproc.exe), the html User’s Guide and the license files.
- Dowload the pandoc msi installer (eg:
pandoc-1.XX-windows.msi) - Unpack it (using 7-Zip) and extract and rename the
pandocEXEfile topandoc.exe - Optionally (if you need to use CiteProc for working with citations and bibliography files) also extract
pandoc_citeprocEXEand rename it topandoc_citeproc.exe.
Make sure that pandoc.exe (and, eventually, pandoc_citeproc.exe) is reachable via %PATH%, or just put it in the same folder as the 2bbcode.lua script and the documents you want to convert (this is a good solution if you want to keep all your work within one folder).
As of pandoc v1.19, the supported input formats are:
commonmark– CommonMark Markdown.docbook– DocBook.docx– Word docx.epub– EPUB.haddock– Haddock markup.html– HTML.json– JSON version of native AST.latex– LaTeX.markdown– pandoc’s extended Markdown.markdown_github– GitHub-Flavored Markdown.markdown_mmd– MultiMarkdown.markdown_phpextra– PHP Markdown Extra.markdown_strict– original unextended Markdown.mediawiki– MediaWiki markup.native– native Haskell.odt– ODT (Open Document Format for Office Applications).opml– OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language).org– Emacs Org mode.rst– reStructuredText.t2t– txt2tags.textile– (subsets of) Textile.twiki– TWiki markup.
You can view a list of all input formats supported in pandoc by typing:
pandoc --list-input-formats